I work for Yandex (leading Russian search engine) and basically have not too much spare time. I travel outside Russia 2 or 3 times a year.

The original reason I came to Wikitravel was to share very detailed pieces of my travel experiences. With time I turned to sharing the key findings and hidden gems from my travel. This experience helped me to find what's most important in my travel notes--and to share them with friends maximizing added value and minimizing useless infowaste.

Additionally, I take a printout of a Wikitravel destination guide wherever I travel, scan them immeditately before each destination to find the key things I need--and mark pieces where structure doesn't help with scanning. And I contribute to ToDo sections of that articles' Talk pages on what was missing from my experience (of course, if I have answers I contribute them directly to the article).

For professional life, I contribute to and edit Wikitravel to better understand how wiki sites and communities work and evolve. I use that experience in shaping our corporate wiki intranet, and in theory it can help in distant future to set up a wiki community for some niche topic, if/when my career urge me to.

I'm a Docent for Russia and Moscow where I live now, and for Altai where I was born and lived until age of 17. I can also help a bit on St. Petersburg as have many friends there, and being there myself several times.

I never offer services as a guide helping you visit sights for a fee. I can only answer some questions on the destinations I am quite knowledgeable about.

Feel free to leave your questions on my Talk Page. If I don't seem to contribute for a long time, feel free to drop email (see contacts at the top of this page). IM is also possible on weekends, but I can't promise to have time on weekdays.

Hi (username). I have a question about something you contributed to (article name) and I've started a discussion in Talk:(article name). If you can, please take a look at the Talk:(article name) page and leave your comments. Thanks!